Page:The web (1919).djvu/112

 own lack. They performed the most pernicious acts of treason, and yet were never conscious they were committing any crime. Von Bernstorff, Dumba, von Papen, Boy-Ed, Bolo Pacha, Rintelen and Dr. Scheele—such a record of treachery never has been known in all the history of diplomacy; such a wholly devilish ingenuity, such an intellectual finesse in conspiracy, such a delicate exactness and such a crude brutality in destruction, never have been manifested on the part of any other nation in the world. The flower of centuries of civilization in Germany's case had been merely a baneful, noisome bloom, and not the sweet product of an actual culture. The efflorescence of the German heart is the fungus of decay. Feed them? Why should we feed them? Trust them? Why should we trust them? Spare them? Why should we spare them? Receive them? Why should we receive them? Believe them? Why should we ever believe them?

A fine band of conspirators was uncovered by investigations of attempted atrocities against our eastern shipping. There was a man named Robert Fay who had invented a ship bomb, and who had all the German money he needed back of him. His machine was a sort of tank which he fastened to the rudder post just below the water line of a ship which was being loaded and which stood high in the water. As the vessel was loaded, it would submerge the tank and leave everything out of sight under water. Fay had worked out one of the most ingenious devices which any of the investigating Government engineers had ever seen.

His scheme, as Mr. Strothers describes it in his book, "Fighting Germany's Spies," was to go under the stern of an ocean steamer in a small boat and to affix to the rudder post this little tank. Of course every reader will know that in steering a ship the rudder turns first this way, then that. Fay had a rod so adjusted that every time the rudder moved it turned a beveled wheel within the bomb just one notch. A certain number of revolutions of that wheel—which of course would be very slow and gradual—would turn the next wheel of the clock one notch. This would gear into the wheel next beyond it. The last wheel would slowly unscrew a threaded cap at